Superman and soaring eagles

I know I haven't really discovered anything new, but now I have proof. Life is weird.

Just when you start despairing, the sun shines through. And when complacency envelops you, something happens to cut away that envelope and expose you to a harsh reality. Then someone mellows the harshness and turns it into a distant unimportant memory. Such is life.

Just when the hair becomes the longest you had in your life, because the hair prefers stability to growth, you have to lose them. And then when you hide your naked head from everyone else (with beautiful scarves), but secretly start admiring your own baldness, including running your hand over it several times a day, Bollywood bald villain style, it grows back into tiny baby hair curls.

And when the storm comes and you just give yourself up to being helplessly carried away, a superman scoops you above the storms, and the clouds below block the view of the carnage created by the storms and you become the soaring eagle, calm and unmindful of any ravages, as you are above it all.

And when you think you've done it all, and had it all, and you think your purpose in life is served, you are told there's more to life, you learn to love yourself and the passion for life is reignited. And when you least expect it, you discover more people care for you than you ever thought you deserved. And when you are in the depths of personal turmoil, events happen to shock you into realizing how wonderful people actually are. And when the torch light dims and you can't see clearly, you realize that replacing batteries makes the light shine brightly again. *winking smiley*

 

And then something makes you realize that even though you want to desperately thank all prayers, help, caring, love, effective advices, guidance that has been gratefully received, it cannot express the depths of your feelings.

That photo is mine, taken by the webcam, while writing this post. Introducing the newborn 'O' positive to my friends. I have baby hair to support my newborn status. *big grin smiley*

 

girl, boy and ivan kalita

O dear Lor', look wottacome across!

Now Google tells me that Kalita is a girl's name.

Before I dive into Kalita, I have a question to ask Google. It demands to be a capital name. Why in the *unprintable word* world? If one writes 'google' starting with a small letter, the thin red wriggly worm appears under it. The automatic spell check turns it into a word with a capital letter and the worm disappears. I respect you a lot Google, can't live without you, a truth that sucks, but a truth nevertheless, but does that make you a proper noun? You are a search engine, but your inputs are from humans, you don't write yourself. For that matter, all of the above hold true for Facebook as well.

This is what one of the entries say:

'Kalita: [ syll. ka-li-ta, kal-ita ] The baby girl name Kalita is pronounced as KahLIYTah. Kalita is used chiefly in Indian and it is derived from Sanskrit origins. Kalita's meaning is known.'

For someone whose both parents were born Kalitas and who married into the Kalita caste, c'est interesting information and breaking news. So now I have a boy's first name (according to google, also check my blogpost titled Zuri, June entry) and a surname that is a girl's name.  I am not saying this. Google is.

There is a Wikipedia entry on 'Kalita' at the link 'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalita_(caste).' Or you could just search for 'Kalita meaning' on Google web search and click on the Wikipedia entry.

I think all the Assamese Kalitas should check it out. It has interesting information of the origins of this caste and also of a powerful nation called 'Kolita' which was devastated by some floods in the 18th century. It seems the Kalitas are of  Alpine Caucasian origin which was deduced by measurements of their cephalic index. Whew! Long way our foreparents travelled (forefathers is a discriminatory word- I'm being funny, please smile). And chose this place to settle in. I don't know how correct the information is, but it makes an interesting read and those of you who are interested in genealogy or are Kalitas (surname or caste), or Assamese, or like history of names, or are like me looking for things to do to make the clock run faster, must check it out.

To widen the interest, people of the Kalita caste write surnames like Saikia, Hazarika, Barua, Phukan,  Lahkar, Mahanta, Medhi, Barman, Chowdhury, Deka, Thakuria, Tahbildar, Boiragi, Talukadar and Kakoti. I may have missed out many more. So all of you with these surnames may be interested.

There was also a Russian Prince called 'Ivan Kalita' in the 14th century. He was cruel and  achieved the right to collect tributes from all Russian lands which is why he was nicknamed "kalita", meaning in the Old Russian language "money-bag". Not nice, but he existed, like it or not.

Too much Russian in my name. Also an acquaintance who was learning Russian a long time back had informed me that Russian is the only language in the world which has the consonant so unique to the Assamese: the xa as in 'Axomiya.' There is no English equivalent to this consonant. Or in any of the other Indian and non Indian languages that I know.



 

Knock knock, Goltisha

Knock knock
Who's there
Leon
Leon who
Mummy mujhe baki ka joke naiii pata! (I don't know the rest of the joke, mummy)

That was Pixu wailing. Everyone was contributing to the knockknock jokes and as in every other situation Pixu wanted to participate too. The above was how his joke ended and he ended up getting the biggest laughs and will continue to do so as long as Jumi (Pixu's mom and my sister) decides to let the story fester. Which, knowing her, and I should know her quite well, is going to be once in every human gathering till she and her memory stay together.

Leena's daughter has got into engineering college. Sonia's daughter is graduating. So many of my other class mates are going to be grannies soon too. Arrey, the girls will get married no, after a few years. Leena says her children already think (as do mine) that we are ancient with dialogues like 'aapke zamaane me' (in your era!) peppering every other conversation. But I feel like 15 years old na! I'm sure Leena and Dhanashree and Huma and Barnali and Gayo and Jyoti and Sangeeta and Kavita all feel that way. Hey girls, all of you even look not much older.  You know na that JLo, Angelina, the other Jennifer (the Aniston one, girls) all are your age. What rocking grannies we'll be.

But I do like the thought of having grandchildren. It is so nice to have kids around. You get to see the world as it really is. Silly, funny and fun. The present moment awareness thingy. Pixu uses 'thingy' in his conversations quite thickly. It is a common noun name for all objects that have no name/whose name Pixu does not know. He is all of 7 years old going on 8. He also makes power point presentations for me. He insisted on making a presentation a couple of days back. He shut the door of his room and his hopeless mum gave away the secret that he was making a surprise for me. He invited me to see the presentation after it was done. It was titled "Happy Mother's Day." I told him it wasn't Mother's Day. Jumi said she had told him the same thing but he had been stubborn. It had toon pictures of hearts circling around the head and mums and kids and told me how much they loved me and how wonderful I was. They think I am their mum. Made sense to me. After all Jumi and I have 2 sets of chromosomes from the same 2 people and even our blood groups are same now.

I hope Munu, Pixu and Ninad allow me to spoil their kids. After all I still squeeze all 3 of them every time I have them within squeezing distance. Pixu is the best to squeeze. Just the right size. Ninad is a little bony. Nevertheless. I hope they don't settle in Norway or any of those countries where they put you in jail for squeezing kids or having them sleep with you so that you can hug them and let them sleep within the crook of your arm. Believe me the kids like being squished. I have another nephew who is 6 years old going on 7 who comes  to me everytime he visits me or I visit him and begs me to 'goltisha' him. 'Goltisha' means 'squeeze' in Jurispeak. He sits in my lap and I have to 'goltisha' him till I get tired. He doesn't get tired of being 'goltisha'd'. I told him I was in Mumbai and would not be able to attend his birthday and wished him 'happy birthday' on the phone. He lives in Guwahati. He told me that it was OK with him even if I went a little late. I informed him that it wasn't possible for me to reach that day. He sounded disappointed yet told me to never mind and come the next day. He would keep some of the cake for me.

You understand why I am looking forward to a brood of grandchildren. They do wonderful things to your ego.